As technology accelerates our lives, many of us feel an urgent need to slow down. One seductive solution: A secular sabbath. Pico Iyer makes the case, in this meditative excerpt from his new TED Book, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Germany’s 7-1 victory over host country Brazil in the World Cup semi-finals this week followed the injury of Brazilian soccer star Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, whose collision with Colombian player Juan Camilo Zúñiga during the quarter-final game last Friday led to a hail of racist epithets aimed at Zúñiga. Ready to go beyond the headlines? 5 primary sources worth reading next.

iO Tillett Wright is currently 5,519 portraits into a mission to point out that we’re all, at heart, the same. Her goal: to photograph 10,000 people around the United States who identify as being something other than 100% heterosexual. Here’s just a small sample of her powerful photographs.